


The Slippery Bank

by ermengarde



Category: Father Brown (2013)
Genre: Community: fic_promptly, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 22:34:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17374466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ermengarde/pseuds/ermengarde
Summary: Father Brown wouldn't say he wastryingto miss the Archbishop, but it does seem a like sitting with nice cup of tea next to the fire andnotstanding for hours on end, answering questions on  the fundraising efforts of Kembleford parish is a more pleasant way to spend an afternoon. It is probably time for him to wake up.





	The Slippery Bank

**Author's Note:**

> For the [Prompt: Author's Choice, Any, "He's not quite dead!" (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)](https://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/616214.html?thread=17437718#cmt17437718)

Father Brown has long since learnt the merit of coming to slowly... Sometimes it means he can keep up the polite fiction that Mrs. McCarthy _doesn't_ come bustling into his room on cold mornings with a cup of tea, and that instead the tea materialises on the bedside cabinet all by itself, and _sometimes_ it means that he gets a few more minutes to process why, exactly, Bunty seems to be standing over him declaiming "He's not _quite_ dead!"

He doesn't feel any kind of dead at all, but strange things do seem to have a habit of happening in Kembleford, and it's not so very long since people used to insist on having bells attached to their coffins, so perhaps those people had a point, if you can feel so very much alive and still have people pondering your mortality.

Come to think of it he does feel rather chilled, and, perhaps, damper than he might normally have preferred. 

"Well of course he isn't." Mrs McCarthy sounds rather cross, with a hint of worry. "He's going to catch his death though. What _was_ he thinking, fishing when the river's so high. If the Williams boys hadn't been suspended from school and decided that hiding under the Wilthingham bridge was a more suitable way to spend their afternoon than doing their sums, who _knows_ what would have happened! I still don't think they should have carried him back from the river, he looked like a sack of potatoes, so undignified."

"He was probably hoping to miss the Archbishop's visit, Mrs. M.." Bunty puts her face closer to Father Brown's ear and stage whispers at him. "Which he successfully has, if he'd like to wake up and have a cup of tea."

Father Brown wouldn't say he was _trying_ to miss the Archbishop, but it does seem a like sitting with nice cup of tea next to the fire and _not_ standing for hours on end, answering questions on the fundraising efforts of Kembleford parish is a more pleasant way to spend an afternoon. It is probably time for him to wake up. 

"Mmmmh." He blinks and reaches up to feel for his glasses. 

 

"They've fallen in the river, Father, James Williams says he'll fetch them for a tanner." Bunty smiles at him, blurrily.

"A _tanner_! Daylight robbery." Mrs. McCarthy seems to be filling the kettle as well as deriding his rescuer for asking for a fair wage for dangerous work, so Father Brown says nothing. Provided everything hasn't fallen out of his pockets in the the river, he will have enough money to slip the boy his fair pay.

"Um." He says and sits up. "Are there any scones?"

Mrs. McCarthy tuts. "Yes of course, father, once you get off the kitchen table."

"Ah, yes." He pats the table twice. "Yes of course. And I should change."

"I've put a clean cassock out for you." Mrs. McCarthy says. "And the tea will be ready when you come back down."

"Oh good, good." Father Brown pulls himself up off the table and swings his feet down onto the floor. "I'll just be a moment."

"Do hurry." Bunty sits at the table before he's even properly stood up. "I'm positively famished."

He smiles at her. "I'll be back before the kettle's whistled."


End file.
